Yeah...on 3 Jul 98,, at 0:25, that cat Jonathan Ng was going on 'bout
something:
At 04:03 PM 7/2/98 -0500, you wrote:
Shortly after rereading Taleswapper's essay on Annoying New Characters, I
started reading "The True Cat Fist" by Jeff Groves and currently on RAAC.
I wonder if Jeff read Taleswapper's essay before writing the fic since he
manages to incorporate almost every single quality that Taleswapper
dislikes about ANCs in Ranma fics.
Well, we *are* reading about Ranma, not the new character. The character
should only be support until we have a clear grasp of the character, and
even then should not surpass our main characters (any recurring character -
i.e. the Tendos, Saotomes and Kunous, Ryouga, Ukyou, Shampoo and any others
I forgot to mention)
Are we? What about a fic that simply uses Ranma 1/2 as a background.
Writing in the universe doesn't necessarily obligate the author to maintain
the same focus as Takahashi. Our Kungfoolery stories relegate the Ranma 1/2
cast to cameo appearances; we have a slew of entirely original characters.
Exceptional martial artist with
strangely named attacks - check.
Any self-insert with a degree of martial arts skill greater than Ukyou will
be carefully watched.
Agreed. For me, though, that's only a precaution to filter out fanfics that
engage on self-glorifying ego trips. I mean, there are some munchkin stories
that are actually well done; but not many. I don't subscribe to the idea
that necessity demands an original character be physically or mentally less
capable than established characters. It's a capricious rule that more or
less embodies certain critiquers' prejudices towards a particular fan vehicle
that tends to color their criticism of the writing itself.
Perfect beyond belief - check.
Nobody's perfect. And that's one of the differences between good and bad
writing.
Mary Sues are very difficult to write (Mary Sue being perfect--everybody
loves her, and at the end she either dies or ends up in bed with the main
character). If written properly, they have the necessary potential for
legendary fanfic material. If written poorly...well...
Steals the story away from the Takahashi
characters - check.
Only indicative of author with unchecked ego and wild fantasy.
Strongly disagree; Takahashi is no more sacred that Saban, in my opinion. If
you're going to write fanfiction, I'd rather read it based on its own merits--
not on how well it kisses up to RT.
The story wonderfully, if unintentionally, illustrates
the points raised in Taleswapper's essay. It is a pity that Jeff seems to
have put a fair degree of effort into writing a mediocre fic.
I am commenting about it because otherwise it is not a badly written story
and illustrates that a story can be well written technically and still be a
mediocre or bad story.
This indicates that the writer is spending too *much* time on the technical
aspects of the story, and should be spending the time instead on developing
the story to a reader's satisfaction.
Developing the technical perspective of a story IS developing the story.
What happens is some authors will tend to concentrate on particular details
without regard to HOW it influences the story--the result is a detached
portion of text that for the most part breaks the flow of the rest of the
story. This is particularly evident in hard sf amateur fics, in which the
author may accidently produce a technical writing paper rather than a
readable piece of fiction. The worse of both worlds, of course, is devoting
too much time to technical bullshit. Technobabble and rambling explanations
that seek desperately to justify some sort of irrelevancy can bring a story
to a grinding halt. I should know, I've been there.
Certainly, mea culpa. The very fact that I read through a story
that had little appeal for me demonstrates this phenomenon. Although a
good story should be independent of the quality of the spelling,
That's actually not true. Unless the person writing has a very serious
language problem, the quality of the spelling indicates 1) the time a
person spent in writing the fic and 2) the time a person spends in
proofreading the fic. Whether this means having prereaders or just looking
over the fic yourself and making minor adjustments, it demonstrates effort
put into writing.
Don't forget: the quality of the spelling is also related to the length of
the story. Two works with the same number of spelling and grammatical errors
may differ vastly in terms of readability, simply because one may be 100K and
the other may be 10K. I definitely have a series of spelling errors in my
fics, most of which are homophonic errors. Also, I located at least four or
five sentence fragments in each episode of the Third Revision of _Liars and
Dreamers._ However, _Liars and Dreamers) is over six episodes with 200K per
episode.
What should critics look for in a story? We use terms like "character
development", "plot", "consistency", but each of us have a different idea
of what these mean. I would like to see some discussion on the FFML about
what we look for when reviewing a story, what we like, what we dislike,
i.e. what makes a good fanfic.
Plot - unfortuneately, everybody has different interests, and what happens
in a story may be one man's meat and another man's poison (sorry for the
cliche) for example, I don't really like Ill Met By Starlight not because
it's not good, but because it's gruesome and dark (sorry, I couldn't come
up with better words) but it's that point which some people like - they say
it adds "realism" to the story. For another example, I don't like Thy
Outward Part for it's sexual graphics, which unfortunately is a critical
part of the story. Generally, I will forgive a character's slight OOCness
if it can advance the plot in an interesting way.
Quite true. I'm not terribly partial to cyberpunk or lemons; although I did
write one as a participant in a challenge a month or two ago (does anyone
still have a copy of Bubblegum Climax--the lemon one? I know, the title's
already in use, but it was the best I could think of on short notice).
Still, I've read a fair number of BGC fics (mostly off this list) and I still
avoid running into critique problems. If I can't enjoy a work I'm
critiquing, I'll simply avoid commenting on the plot's substance; instead,
I'll concentrate on how the author works his characters through his or her
chosen plotline.
Generally, if you want your plot to go anywhere, you have to plan it
(unless your story is really short, but even then you have to have a
beginning, an ending, and places in between). I've started to do it
myself, for a number of fanfics that are in development stage.
Not really. A lot of excellent fiction (in my opinion) is off the cuff. Tom
Clancy, for example, works out the plot of his novels WHILE he writes them.
I do the same thing, and I'm sure a number of decent fanfic authors on this
list also draw inspiration during the actual writing phase. Planning is not
necessarily a priority, but it's your prerogative.
Characters - Like I said, characters aren't perfect. They have to have
some shred of humanity within them. Also, what happens *between*
characters is just as important as what happens to characters individually
(something I currently call "complex character interaction") In Waters
Under Earth, for example, we see Tarou and Ranma interacting (actually,
they throw insults at each other) and we also see the internal politics of
Saffron's people.
Depends on how you want to depict your characters. Perfect, unerring, and/or
immutable characters have been literary devices four centuries. To draw on a
less than stellar example, Ayn Rand's _The Fountainhead_ uses stereotypical,
flat characters to highlight the humanity of characters actually filling
*secondary* roles. Roark to Cameron, Toohey to Keating, etc.
-The Reverend Prez
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